BRUSSELS (Thomson Financial) - EU internal markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy reiterated his support for self-regulation for the hedge fund industry and said there was 'no market failure' in the industry that would necessitate external regulation.
He was speaking to reporters on the fringes of the informal meeting of European finance ministers in Berlin.
He added that hedge funds were 'aggressive... but they're big boys who know what they're doing'.
McCreevy said this was the nature of the industry, adding that when hedge fund Aramanth collapsed with losses of 6 bln usd on speculative gas trades, 'if they lost 6 bln, someone must have made 6 bln on the other side'.
Separately, when asked about the current bidding war to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro NV, he was confident that the Dutch regulator would not try and stop the bank being bought by a foreign bidder.
Ministers will vote on a proposed European directive, put forward by Commissioner McCreevy, to make cross-border banking deals less open to protectionism by national regulators at their next formal meeting in May.
'The Dutch were the best advocates of the new approach,' McCreevy said. frances.robinson@thomson.com fr/jkm COPYRIGHT Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.